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The History of Heritage

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The History of Heritage ASHGATE RESEARCH 1 COMPANION The History of Heritage David C. Harvey It is so customary to think of the historical past in terms of narrative, sequences, dates and chronologies that we are apt to suppose these things aributes of the past itself. But they are not; we ourselves put them there (Lowenthal, 1985, 219). When writing histories of institutions, one would, ideally, like to start at the beginning. With heritage, however, although one can insert various developments such as the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act of 1882, or the publication of John Ruskin’s Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) into a meaningful narrative, the definition of a strict chronology, let alone the resolution of a ‘beginning’, appear to be arbitrary. Indeed, as I have argued elsewhere, even the frequently cited notion that heritage is somehow inexorably connected to ‘modernity’ is problematical (Harvey, 2001). Heritage itself is not a thing and does not exist by itself – nor does it imply a movement or a project. Rather, heritage is about the process by which people use the past – a ‘discursive construction’ with material consequences (see Smith, 2006, 11–13). As a human condition therefore, it is omnipresent, interwoven within the power dynamics of any society and intimately bound up with identity construction at both communal and personal levels. It would, for instance, be impossible to date such a popular mnemonic device relating to the weather as ‘red sky at night, shepherd’s delight’. Yet the role of this saying as an item of heritage, the meaning of which is founded upon idealized representations of a collective past and which has purpose (or use value) in the present, together with a sense of projection into the future, is clear. Rather, what we can aempt to outline is a history of heritage in terms of a history of power relations that have been formed and operate via the deployment of the heritage process. This chapter, therefore, focuses upon the historical narrative of the changing forms of this process; its developing technologies, modes of representation and levels of access and control – in short, upon the history of the struggle to control the use of heritage within society. The link between heritage and identity within such a project tends to focus upon the control and use of heritage by official powers, and oen concentrates on the nation as the primary vehicle for such a project. Indeed, Smith (2006, 11) sees a hegemonic ‘authorized heritage discourse’ that acts to validate a ‘set of practices and performances, which populates both popular and expert constructions of T A R C H I “heritage” and undermines alternative and subaltern ideas about heritage’. To paraphrase George Orwell’s much-quoted comment: ‘who controls the present controls the past’. As well as underscoring the ‘presentness’ and political purpose of heritage, however, this phrase also pushes to the fore the way in which heritage is used with an eye to the future, rather than allowing one-dimensional ideas of preservation to obscure our task. Although a ‘history of heritage’ will inevitably tend to focus upon the big identity politics of heritage control at an official (and oen national) level, we should not forget the importance of the personal and local heritage – ‘small heritages’ if you like – about which it is impossible and largely meaningless to write such a general history. As well as being alternative or ‘subaltern’ or actively resisting authority, these small heritages can also be everyday and even banal. Indeed, in a recent oral history project in Devon (UK), for instance, a farmer recalled the familial saying that was associated with his farm: ‘further from the farm, closer to the clay’ (see Riley and Harvey, 2007). The farmer went on to explain how the deeper topsoil of the land close to the holding still dictated the way in which he could plant crops around the farm, and le the research team mulling over exactly how long such a saying had been in use – how many generations of people residing in that valley had farmed according to this localized heritage of intimate and personal memory of the past, formed in the present, and set for use in the future? As will be discussed below, it is towards such small heritages that much aention, policy and practice is focused at present; as confidence in meta-narratives of heritage purpose is being questioned, it is through such small heritages that an answer may be at hand. Reflecting the experience of the author, the chapter focuses very much on the politics of, and struggles over, the control of heritage in Britain. By grounding the ‘British story’ in theories of heritage and history culture, processes of institutionalization, democratization, developing technology and themes of agency and social power, I hope to make this story of wider relevance. Some Theoretical Terrain For this chapter, I have taken heritage to refer to ‘a contemporary product shaped from history’ (Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1996, 20). This concise definition conveys that heritage is subjective and filtered with reference to the present, whenever that present actually is. It is a value-laden concept, related to processes of economic and cultural commodification, but intrinsically reflective of a relationship with the past, however that past is perceived and defined (Harvey, 2001, 327). The definition of heritage, not as the result of a movement or project (connected with modernity or otherwise), but as the product of a present-centred process would, on the face of it, seem to sidestep the whole issue of the need to delineate a history of it. Heritage resides in the here and now – whenever and wherever that here and now happens to be.1 In practice, however, the proclamation of the human need for heritage, shared by all societies, provides 1 This implied truncation of temporal depth is discussed in Harvey (2001). 20 T H k H scope for a much greater engagement in historical analysis than was previously the case (Dodgshon, 1999; Harvey, 2001). Most importantly, the extending temporal scope that is implied overturns the traditional historical concern for imposing a supposedly objective chronology onto a linear past receding behind us, by foregrounding the importance of both contemporary context, and of concern for the future. ‘Every society has had a relationship with its past, even those which have chosen to ignore it’ (Harvey, 2001, 320). By extending the temporal scope of heritage both backwards and forwards, it becomes possible to conceive of a history of heritage – or ‘heritage of heritage’ – that has more power; heritage heroes such as William Morris, for instance, can be placed not as elements of an inevitable sequence of growing heritage concern, nor even in the context of their own time, but in the context of our needs and yearnings for a specific past and our desires for a particular future. In order to provide a historical narrative of heritage as a process (and I should emphasize that this is ‘a’ historical narrative, rather than ‘the history of …’), we need to define more clearly what is under review, and how it may be approached. As numerous authors have intimated, heritage is very difficult to define (Graham, Ashworth and Tunbridge, 2000; Harvey, 2001; Larkham, 1995; Schouten, 1995; Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1996). ‘Far from being fatally predetermined or God- given, [heritage] is in large measure our own marvellously malleable creation’ (Lowenthal, 1998, 226). Emphasizing its lack of fixity and the presentness of its creation, Lowenthal implies an innate sense of dispute – or dissonance – within heritage that other authors have underlined (Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1996). However, questions about agency (just who is doing the creating? Who is us?), together with questions about the means through which heritage is conveyed and knowledge produced, are le somewhat hanging. Drawing on the theoretical work of Holtorf (2002, 2.6), one can portray heritage as a vehicle (oen, but not only, a site) where cultural memory and various phenomena of history culture reside. Cultural memory comprises the collective understandings of the past as they are held by a people in any given social and historical context (Holtorf, 2002, 2.0). Ideas of cultural memory are, therefore, laden with politics and power relationships as statements about the past become meaningful through becoming embedded within the cultural and material context of a particular time. Nora (1989, 7) talks of processes of crystallization as memory ‘secretes’ itself around certain sites, objects, places, practices and concepts and is given value for particular ends. This retrospective memory, according to Holtorf (2002, 2.0) therefore, manifests itself through history culture – the ways that the past is ‘presenced’ in everyday life, supporting, augmenting and guiding collective identities that reflect both a conscious and unconscious ‘will to remember’. In addition, the sense of purpose with which people ‘remember’ the past serves to underline the importance of understanding how people situate themselves with respect to the future. In this respect, heritage may be understood in terms of a prospective memory, as tokens that represent a desired future – reflecting both future pasts and past futures. The act of conferring the label ‘heritage’ onto something – whether physical or otherwise – provides a sense of purpose. Resonant of Geary’s (1994, 12) observation that ‘all memory is memory for something’, this sense of purpose that heritage conveys must be 21 T A R C H I recognized and its history understood, as purposes change with changing times (Holtorf, 2002, 2.8). This chapter, therefore, explores how cultural memory has developed over time – how collective understandings of the past have reflected changing social and historical contexts – and has been articulated through numerous places, objects, sites, sayings, concepts, traditions and practices that may be denoted as heritage.
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